The household, as we may readily conceive, was thrown into confusion. The husband, overwhelmed, was unable to lend his usual helping hand to the indispensable routine, and, in particular, there was no one competent to put little children to bed, and attend to them during the night. Miss Evans, quite as a matter of course, took the place of the absent mother, as she had done before, and remained an inmate of the house until the affairs of the family were again in some orderly train. She continued to watch over them, as any affectionate woman would who saw little children left worse than motherless.
These things had their natural effect upon the feelings of the injured husband. In due time he proposed to her, and she accepted him, both assuming that, in so plain a case, there could be neither difficulty nor delay in completing the requisite divorce. The wife, who was living in open defiance of law, it was well known would offer no opposition to the formal severance of a tie already rudely broken by her. Nevertheless, an obstacle arose. An ancient and originally well-meant provision of English law debars an injured husband from obtaining a divorce if he has once forgiven an erring wife and resumed cohabitation with her.
The discovery of this statute threw the parties concerned into painful embarrassment. They thought at first of marrying abroad, but no foreign marriage is valid in England against English law; nor indeed can a lawful marriage be contracted in the continent of Europe unless the authorities of the country are legally notified that no obstacle exists in the laws of the country to which the couple belong. In these circumstances, Mr. Lewes invited a number of his friends to his house, in whose presence and with whose sanction they contracted matrimony, deeming it within their right, both as human beings and as citizens, to disregard a law so manifestly
